DESCRIPTION

Flist is used to search a list of folders and display the number of
messages in these folders that are in a given sequence or set of
sequences (for example the “unseen” sequence). This is especially
useful if you use some mechanism such as slocal or procmail (typically
in conjunction with rcvstore) to pre-sort your mail into different
folders before you view it.
By default, the command flist will search the current folder for the
given sequence or sequences (usually “unseen”). If (possibly multiple)
folders are specified on the command line with +folder, then all these
folders are searched for the given sequence(s). Flist will display for
each folder searched, the number of messages in each of the specified
sequences, and the total number of messages.
The option -sequence is used to specify the name of a sequence in which
to search for. This option may be used multiple times to specify
multiple sequences. If this is not given, then the default is to
search for all the sequences specified by the “Unseen-Sequence” profile
component. For more details about sequences, read the mh-sequence(5)
man page.
Typically, flist will produce a line for each sequence, for every
folder that is searched, even those which do not contain any messages
in the given sequence. Specifying -noshowzero will cause flist to
print only those folder/sequence combinations such the folder has a
non-zero number of messages in the given specified sequence.
If -recurse is given, then for each folder that is search, flist will
also recursively descend into those folders to search subfolders for
the given sequence.
If -fast is given, only the names of the folders searched will be
displayed, and flist will suppress all other output. If this option is
used in conjunction with -noshowzero, then flist will only print the
names of those folders searched that contain messages in in at least
one of the specified sequences.
MultipleFolders
If the option -all is given (and no folders are specified with
+folder), then flist will search all the folders in the top level of
the users nmh directory. These folders are all preceded by the
read-only folders, which occur as “atr-cur-” entries in the user’s nmh
context.
An example of the output of flist-all is:
/work/Mail has 5 in sequence unseen (private); out of 46
inbox+ has 10 in sequence unseen ; out of 153
junklist has 0 in sequence unseen ; out of 63
postmaster has 1 in sequence unseen ; out of 3
The “+” after inbox indicates that it is the current folder.
The “private” flag indicates that the given sequence for that folder is
private. See the mh-sequence(5) man page for details about private
sequences.
If the option -all and +folder are both specified, then flist will
search this folder, and all its first level subfolders for the given
sequence. You may specify multiple folders in this way.
If flist is invoked by a name ending with “s” (e.g. flists), then the
switch -all is assumed by default.
The sorting order for the listing is alphabetical (with -alpha), or in
a priority order defined by the “Flist-Order” profile entry (with
-noalpha). Each item in the “Flist-Order” is a folder name or a folder
name pattern that uses * to match zero or more characters. Longer
matching patterns have precedence over shorter matching patterns. For
example:
Flist-Order: personal petproject mh* * admin *junk
This order puts a few interesting folders first, such as those with
mail addressed to you personally, those about a pet project, and those
about mh-related things. It places uninteresting folders at the end,
and it puts everything else in the middle in alphabetical order.

FILES

$HOME/.mh_profile The user profile

PROFILECOMPONENTS

Path: To determine the user’s nmh directory
mh-sequences: File that contains public sequences
Unseen-Sequence: The name of the unseen message sequence
Flist-Order: To sort folders by priority